DSimon comments on Science: Do It Yourself - Less Wrong

53 Post author: alyssavance 13 February 2011 04:47AM

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Comment author: Alicorn 13 February 2011 08:18:58PM 6 points [-]

Poll: what studies would you do if ethics were not a constraint?

Comment author: DSimon 16 February 2011 06:27:59PM 2 points [-]

(Assuming that not only institutional ethics but my own sense of morality is not a constraint.)

A lot of the really interesting things we know about broad-scale human neurology, particularly some tricky stuff about the nature of consiousness, are due to the study of people who have suffered brain damage. If there were no ethical constraints, I would deliberately induce carefully controlled forms of brain damage on humans and observe the results.